Behold This Swarthy Face
Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes,This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck,My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm;Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me lightlyon the lips with robust love,And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship’s deck give akiss in return,We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea,We are those two natural and nonchalant persons.
Words in this poem
- nonchalant a.
- Indifferent; careless; cool. [F., fr. non not (L. non) + chaloir to concern one's self for, fr. L. calere to be warm, to be inflamed with desire, to be troubled. See Non-, and Caldron.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Behold This Swarthy Face is in the public domain. This text is taken from Leaves of Grass, Project Gutenberg ebook #1322; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walt Whitman, Behold This Swarthy Face, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/behold-this-swarthy-face.html, id L03874.
Form and metre
Behold This Swarthy Face is 9 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 85% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 12.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 22% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Behold this swarthy face, these gray eyes, | 9 | ˘/·/˘···· |
| This beard, the white wool unclipt upon my neck, | 11 | ··········· |
| My brown hands and the silent manner of me without charm; | 14 | ·····/˘/˘····· |
| Yet comes one a Manhattanese and ever at parting kisses me lightly | 19 | ·········/˘·/˘/˘·/˘ |
| on the lips with robust love, | 7 | ····˘/· |
| And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship’s deck give a | 16 | ····/˘·········· |
| kiss in return, | 4 | ··˘/ |
| We observe that salute of American comrades land and sea, | 16 | ·˘/·˘/·˘/˘˘/···· |
| We are those two natural and nonchalant persons. | 13 | ····/˘˘··˘//˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.